Debby Yoder, Contributor

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Atlanta’s Redevelopment Rap Sheet

Photo Credit: Hunt Archbold

Posted
by Terrence C. Wall, ATLANTA, GA – This city keeps destroying and building and ignoring blight. Now
there are plans for a new Georgia Dome to make sure the Falcons don’t move to
the suburbs. At the same time since the Braves announced that they are leaving
Atlanta for Cobb County, the city has said that Turner Field, a stadium that’s
not even a quarter of a century old, will be demolished and replaced with
middle income housing. All of this destruction and redevelopment costs money. I
really don’t have a problem with that as long as the neighborhoods surrounding
these huge projects benefit. Unfortunately Atlanta’s rap sheet on redevelopment
doesn’t include supporting the poor surrounding neighborhoods.

For
the ‘new’ Georgia Dome the city is tearing down two historic churches. Less
than a mile away is the now abandoned Morris Brown College, a Historical Black
College that fell on hard times about four years ago. The city is talking about
purchasing the campus. Will this be another tear down? I recently visited the
campus and found that many of the buildings boarded up closed and a dilapidated football stadium. It looked terrible. I cannot believe the city
is willing to build a Billion dollar stadium without addressing the blight and
poverty that will surround it. The Georgia Dome we have now is not ugly looking
or old, which begs the question as to why we need a new one. Maybe it will be
state-of-the-art but it will still be in the same situation the existing one is
in if things around it are not fixed up.

Photo Credit: Emily Bacher

Terrence C. Wall is a Sociology major at
Georgia State University. You can contact him at terrencewalls@gmail.com

Search This Blog

Translate

Social Shutter is an independent venue for submitted works with no official affiliation with Georgia State University. All authors retain the rights to their original works and Social Shutter is not liable for the content.